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Gobustan – Absheron Tour with Mud Volcanoes

Gobustan – Absheron Tours Covers Gobustan Rocks,  Mud Volcanoes, and the Absheron Area. The Gobustan tour is a full-day trip and covers the major museums and historical places of Baku city and the Absheron area. It mainly covers the Gobustan rocks, Mud Volcanoes, Fire Temple, Burning Hill, and other historical places located on the route. During this full-day Gobustan tour, you will be amazed at Azerbaijan’s history, and natural resources, and have an Off-Road style car experience.

HIGHLIGHTS OF GOBUSTAN TOUR

Mud Volcanoes

The Gobustan tour starts after picking up the guests from the hotel. Our first destination will be Gobustan and whenever we reach to Gobustan area, we will change our transport ( because the road leading to Mud Volcanoes is in bad condition, so only specific cars especially Russian cars can get there), and lead to the Mud Volcanoes.

Home to nearly a third of the world’s mud volcanoes, Azerbaijan features a messy, bubbling, and sometimes explosive landscape. Mud volcanoes are closely associated with hydrocarbon and petrochemical stores underground. The gas trying to escape to the surface. A few of these gas leaks are constantly on fire, shooting small perpetual flames into the air. Some believe that these perpetual flames are strongly connected to the appearance of the Zoroastrian religion in Azerbaijan some 2,000 years ago.

Every 20 years or so, one of these mud/gas volcanoes will ignite deep below the surface and create a massive explosion. While generally not dangerous to people, as they are far outside of most city centers. It is believed that six shepherds and over 2,000 sheep were killed by a mud volcano in Bozdagh, Azerbaijan.

Gobustan Museum and Rocks

Once the Mud Volcanoes trip is over, Heading to the Gobustan museum to enjoy our Gobustan tour after spending some time in the information Museum, we lead to the Gobustan Rock Art (open-air museum). About 40 miles southwest of the center of Baku was established in 1966 when the region was declared a national historic landmark of Azerbaijan in an attempt to preserve the ancient carvings, mud volcanoes, and gas stones in the region. It is very rich in archeological monuments, the reserve has more than 6,000 rock carvings, which depict primitive people, animals, battle pieces, ritual dances, and pictures of the sun and stars, on average dating back to 5,000-20,000 years.

At the end of the Gobustan tour, we are back in the city and exploring other places which cover our itinerary.

Bibiheybat Mosque

On the way back from the Gobustan area we will pass through the Bibi-Heybat Mosque, where we will stop for a while.
The Bibi-Heybat is a historical mosque in Baku, Azerbaijan. The existing structure, built in the 1990s, is a recreation of the mosque of the same name built in the 13th century by Shirvanshah Farrukhzad II Ibn Ahsitan II, which was completely destroyed by the Bolsheviks in 1936. Today the Bibi-Heybat Mosque is the spiritual center for the Muslims of the region and one of the major monuments of Islamic architecture in Azerbaijan.

The World’s First Industrially Drilled Oil Well

For the first time in history, the industrial production of oil started in Baku. This event was known in Azerbaijan but documentary evidence has been found recently in the archives. As a result, the world’s first oil well of 21m deep and drilled in 1846 in the village of Bibiheybat near Baku was founded and restored, which became an open-air museum.

Absheron

Fire Temple (Ateshgah)

The Baku Ateshgah (from Persian: آتشگاه‎, Atashgāh, Azerbaijani: Atəşgah), often called the “Fire Temple of Baku” is a castle-like religious temple in Surakhani town, a suburb in Baku, Azerbaijan.

In the Gobustan Absheron trip Based on Persian inscriptions, the temple was used as a Hindu, Sikh, and Zoroastrian place of worship. “Atash” (آتش) is the Persian word for fire. The pentagonal complex, which has a courtyard surrounded by cells for monks and a tetrapolar-altar in the middle, was built during the 17th and 18th centuries. It was abandoned in the late 19th century, probably due to the dwindling Indian population in the area.

Burning Mountain (Yanardagh)

Yanar Dag (Azerbaijani: Yanar Dağ, meaning “burning mountain”) is a natural gas fire that blazes continuously on a hillside on the Absheron Peninsula on the Caspian Sea near Baku. Unlike mud volcanoes, the Yanar Dag flame burns fairly steadily, as it involves a steady seep of gas from the subsurface. It is claimed that the Yanar Dag flame was only noted when accidentally lit by a shepherd in the 1950s.

Heydar Aliyev Cultural Center

The last destination of the Gobustan tour will be the spectacular work of Zaha Hadid which was built in 2012 and covers a 57,500 m² area. Some facts about the building: